Tag Archives: Justin E. A. Busch

Justin, We Hardly Knew You

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Justin E. A. Busch

By John Hertz: (partly reprinted from Vanamonde 1520)

Justin Edwin Anton Busch (1959-2022) left for After-Fandom last month, on the first day of Corflu XXXIX (fanziners’ convention; usually in the Spring, this year 21-23 Oct).  He had been living in St. Paul, Minnesota, and was a member of Stipple-Apa.  His own fanzines were Far Journeys and Dreams Renewed.  He had been active in the Nat’l Fantasy Fan Federation, contributing a monthly fanzine-review column “Fanfaronade” to FanActivity Gazette and editing Films Fantastic.  The First Fandom organization had just given him a Merit Award, which it does not present often.

He had two books published by McFarland, The Utopian Vision of H.G. Wells (2009) and Self and Society in the Films of Robert Wise (2010; RW [1914-2005] inter alia directed The Day the Earth Stood Still [1951] and the first Star Trek movie [1979]).  The publisher and titles may suggest academia: a good inference, he had a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Queen’s University (Kingston, Ontario, Canada).

He was a composer.  A 2008 audio Compact Disc from TraumSpiel has his “Destiny and Desire”, “Consent”, “Meditations”, “Obsessions”, and works of Anton Rubinstein (1829-1894); its notes say Busch’s

compositions … have been performed internationally … a chamber opera, two sinfoniettas … six string quartets … works for choral ensembles, and dozens of songs and piano solos.  Several dance and theatre groups have commissioned him to create new music for their productions.  He is a past prizewinner of composition contests held by the Anchorage Flute Society and Zeitgeist, a St. Paul, Minnesota, new music ensemble….  wine columns in two separate independent magazines … writings on music, film, and philosophical topics [in] The Clarinet (U.S.), Wagner (U.K.), CineAction (Canada [“The Centre Cannot Hold: Betrayals in Alfred Hitchcock’s Topaz”, No. 66, 2005]), and Aspekt (Slovakia)….  fiction in Hooligan Follies and Challenging Destiny [“In the Sight of Eternity”, No. 12, Apr 2001].

About himself he wrote (W. Breiding’s Portable Storage 5, pp. 6-7),

I’ve been fascinated by the fact of print for pretty nearly as long as I have memories….  pleasure in the tactility of books….  Before I was ten I’d read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Lord of the Rings, Catch-22, The Scarlet Letter, and War of the Worlds….  I read Sam Moskowitz’s The Immortal Storm before 1974.  I didn’t know about Harry Warner’s fan history books until years later.  I attended Discon II [32nd World Science Fiction Convention]….  practically every SF book or story before Star Wars is obscure to modern fans.  The idea of doing [Dreams Renewed] as miniature pamphlets was inspired by Jack Speer’s fanzine A, although I needed a bit more space than [his] 1×1.5 inch size.

About his use of “Fanfaronade”, he wrote (FanActivity Gazette Nov 2021),

So far as I can ascertain, the first person to use the title was Jeff Wanshel … three issues … #1, dated 1960; #2, dated April, 1961; #3, dated July, 1961….  Terry Carr attached it to a single column, “Fanzine Fanfaronade,” in the April, 1964 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction….  Carol Kennedy’s column, “Fanfaronade” … ran in Mnstf’s clubzine Rune from issue 51 (1978) to issue 61 (1980)….  in … Rune 61 [she wrote] “I prefer to live in a world in which people draw the lines they think are beautiful, rather than a world in which everyone draws the lines I think are beautiful.”  Further comment would be otiose.

Here are some of his notes on fanzines.

Banana Wings
Claire Brialey & Mark Plummer; 59, Shirley Rd; Croydon CR0 7ES; England, U.K.
“Fanfaronade” 17, Gazette Dec 2021

each issue begins with a widely ranging article, “Roadrunner”, by Mark Plummer…. smoothly and engagingly written….  a similarly expansive essay by Claire Brialey….  readers supply, in the guise of letters, their own essays, some quite extensive … edited [but] given plenty of room to develop their ideas, arguments, memories, and associations….  The result, as so often is the case with extensive lettercols like this, is greater than the sum of its parts

Beam
Nic Farey & Ulrika O’Brien; Farey, 2657 Rungsted St.; Las Vegas, NV 89142; E-mail <[email protected]>; O’Brien, 418 Hazel Ave. N., Kent, WA 98030, E-mail <[email protected]>; available at <efanzines.com> F 25, G Sep 22

another of the worthy successors to Bill Bowers’ renowned Outworlds: a substantial zine … presenting an extensive mix of personal, fannish, and sercon essays, capped … with a zestful lettercol … art and photographs ([which] would, in decades past, [have] been a bountiful harvest of fillos from a wide range of artists)….  What appears to be the conclusion [of an essay by O’Brien in B 16] is nothing of the sort; general discussion of scientific principles and their application suddenly, seamlessly, becomes a deeply personal account of the process necessary for Beam itself to exist…. depicted beautifully and with unexpected touches of humor….  “Be ready to change your mind….  You can practice … by regularly considering ideas you disagree with”

Christian * New Age Quarterly
Catherine Groves, P.O. Box 276, Clifton, NJ 07015; four issues “and plenty of extras” for US$12.50. F22, G May 2022

a zine, edited by one person for decades, with what appears to be a limited focus…. [but] despite the specificity of the zine’s remit, and the often personal foundation of the articles, it somehow manages to provide (that is, its editor insists upon) essays upon a wide range of often unexpected topics [and] critical yet generous letters of comment

Tommyworld
Tommy Ferguson; <http://tommyworld.net>; 85125 Haypark Ave; Belfast BT7 3FG; Northern Ireland, U.K. F11, Nameless News Jun 2021; F 14, Gazette Sep 2021; F18, G Jan 2022

In just four pages [T 84, May 2021] the heartfelt tributes to [Paul] Campbell [1949-2021] bring him to life vividly and touchingly.  If you care about fan history, and you should, you will enjoy….  This [T 87] is normally a two-pager; it says much for its loyal audience that the lettercol issue this time around needs four pages, and could easily have been four pages longer still (seven letters; eleven WAHFs)….  the whole lettercol is so energetic that…. this is a publication well worth investigating….  Ferguson … revealed that he “has a tattoo of Lenin on his person” (he didn’t say where)….  Chatty, pleasant, and very fannish: if you’re a fan of fannishness, pluck this one

Vanamonde
John Hertz; 236 S. Coronado St., No. 409; Los Angeles, CA 90057
F14, G Sep 2021; F19, G Feb 2022; F25, G Sep 2022

a … cabinet of wonders, with Hertz as the cheerful proprietor….  a terse but informative account of the high points….  one of the most efficient writers in fandom….  Hertz is … aware of context, and takes … pleasure in making … connections….  genial, amusing, and educational….  ranges over topics fannish and mundane, usually several per issue, in his urbane and often witty prose

Requiescat in pace.

Singing “Johnny, we hardly knew you” about Justin is due to Jerry Kaufman. Corflu = mimeograph correction fluid, once indispensable; First Fandom = those active at least as early as 1936, or maybe the 1st World Science Fiction Convention (1939), also a club in their honor founded 1953; fillos = fill-in illustrations (or other drawings), lettercol = letter column, Mnstf = Minnesota Science Fiction Society, stf (pronounced “stef”) from Hugo Gernsback’s word “scientifiction”; sercon = serious and constructive (sometimes a compliment), Stipple-Apa, an amateur press ass’n of Minneapolis & St. Paul; WAHF = we also heard from (correspondents whose letters weren’t printed)

Pixel Scroll 10/24/22 Labyrinth of Chaos

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(1) EU TURN. BBC Future explores the meaning of “Eucatastrophe: Tolkien’s word for the ‘anti-doomsday’”.

…In particular, Tolkien wrote about what makes a happy ending so powerful in stories. And to do so, he came up with an intriguing coinage: fairy stories, he suggested, often feature a “eucatastrophe” – this was, he suggested, a “good” catastrophe. So, what exactly did he mean? And could such events happen in real life too?

In the present day, Tolkien’s idea of the “good catastrophe” has attracted the attention of scholars who study existential risk and humanity’s future prospects. It turns out that eucatastrophes may matter beyond fairy stories – and identifying the conditions that lead to them could be necessary if we want to thrive as a species.

According to Tolkien, a eucatastrophe in a story often happens at the darkest moment. When all seems lost – when the enemy seems to have won – a sudden “joyous turn” for the better can emerge. It delivers a deep emotional reaction in readers: “a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart”, he wrote….

(2) CLOSE LOOK AT THE CLARKE FINALISTS. The winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award will be announced on Wednesday. Andrew Butler, chair of judges, discusses the finalists in detail in “The Best Science Fiction of 2022: The Clarke Award Shortlist” at Five Books.

…Let’s talk about Deep Wheel Orcadia by the Scottish writer Harry Josephine Giles. It’s a novel-in-verse, which takes a very interesting literary approach. Can you tell us more?

Novels-in-two-verses, you might argue. One in Orcadian, one in English. Orcadian is a dialect of Scots—as opposed to Gaelic—and there’s a history of Scots feeding into science fiction and horror, especially Gothic horror. In 1919, someone came up with the idea of the Caledonian antisyzygy—the Scots think in one language, but feel in another, say. There’s a sort of divided consciousness at the centre of Scottish books, poetry and art—and we can trace this division in authors such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Iain M. Banks and many others.

I think I can relate to that.

The action of Deep Wheel Orcadia is mostly set on or close to an isolated space station, at a crisis point in the solar system, and focuses on the working and private lives of the characters on board. You could decide to read the Orcadian version and then the English, or vice versa, or just one—but you’d miss so much if you only read half. I think you can pick up the Orcadian, as you might the Riddleyspeak in Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker….

(3) SCORING SFF. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] I listened to this 2017 podcast Leonard and Jessie Maltin had with composer Michael Giacchino. You knew this would be a great interview because Giacchino begins the interview by saying that when he’s in the car, he listens to old-time radio and his favorite show is the sf show X Minus One. Leonard Maltin wrote a very good book about old time radio and he and Giacchino geek out about radio for many minutes.  Most of the rest of the interview was how Giacchino got his start; he graduated from the School of Visual Arts with postgraduate work at Julliard. He ended up scoring video games and got a big break from Steven Spielberg that led to his scoring “The Lost World” video game. Another big break led to Giacchino writing the score for The Incredibles after John Barry, who originally was offered the job, declined.

I think Giacchino is the best active film composer and he also gets credit for hiring veteran musicians who have all their skills but may need help with technology or disabilities. Between 85-90 percent of Giacchino’s work is for sf or fantasy films, so this should be of interest. Maltin on Movies: “Michael Giacchino”.

(4) KEN BURNS TURNS THE PAGE. In the New York Times: “Ken Burns Wishes More People Would Call Willa Cather a Great American Novelist”, however, he also reads sff.

What books are on your night stand?

I have a pretty big night stand. … and then I have Kim Stanley Robinson’s “New York 2140,” which is a really wonderful book, imagining a less dystopian future. It does have disasters and climate change, but it also has sort of human adaptability, and it’s really spectacular. 

Do you have favorite genres and genres that you avoid?

I don’t like horror. I had a big science fiction thing in high school and college and I haven’t read science fiction in ages and ages. I used to read religiously Roger Zelazny and now I can’t even find his books on a bookshelf at a reputable bookstore. But everything else is kind of open. I like good writing. One writer I love is Willa Cather. People say, Was it Melville or Hemingway or Twain who wrote the great American novel, meaning “Moby-Dick” or “A Farewell to Arms” or obviously “Huckleberry Finn,” where, as Hemingway rightly said, American literature begins. But what about “O Pioneers!” or “My Ántonia”? For that matter, what about Gabriel García Márquez? We do not have a copyright on the word “American.”

(5) BUSCH COMMEMORATED. First Fandom President John L. Coker III announced a tribute to the late Justin E. A. Busch who died October 21.

Last week, after I learned about his grave condition, I had an award plaque made.  It is the seldom-given First Fandom Merit Award, “Presented to Justin E. A. Busch for attaining excellence in his work.”  He didn’t live long enough to see it but I would like for it to be at least a small part of his legacy.

(6) MEMORY LANE.

1984 — [By Cat Eldridge.] Ray Bradbury’s A Memory of Murder

Ray Bradbury’s A Memory of Murder is a collection of fifteen of his mystery short stories published thirty-eight years ago by Dell. They first appeared from 1944 to 1948 in pulp magazines owned by Popular Publications, Inc. that specialized in detective and crime fiction.

Bradbury wasn’t that happy with these stories as he thought he hadn’t developed yet as a writer and made that well known more than once later on. As he said in an interview with Crime Time, “When my first detective mystery stories began to appear in Dime Detective, Dime Mystery Magazine, Detective Tales, and Black Mask in the early ’40s, there was no immediate trepidation over in the Hammett-Chandler-Cain camp. The fact is, it didn’t develop later either. I was never a threat. I couldn’t, in the immortal words of Marlon Brando, have been a contender.”

The stories themselves numbered fifteen in total with titles such as “A Careful Man Dies” from New Detective Magazine in November 1946). The cover blurb was “For a hemophiliac, no object is innocent, and even a kiss can kill!” It was one of Bradbury’s stories that filmed in 2005, this time by Italian backers and producers. 

Another one, “It Burns Me Up!” from Dime Mystery Magazine in November 1944 carried the wonderfully chilling first line of “I am lying here in the very centre of the room and I am not mad, I am not angry, I am not perturbed” it serves as a great reminder that some of his stories got turned comics, see Ray Bradbury Comics, Number 3, published in 1993.

I’ll let Ed Gorman have the last word as he reviewed this collection over on his blog in his column Forgotten Books. He said of his favorite story, “The most interesting story is ‘The Long Night.’ I remember the editor who bought it writing a piece years later about what a find it was. And it is. A story set in the Hispanic area of Los Angeles during the war, it deals with race and race riots, with the juvenile delinquency that was a major problem for this country in the war years (remember The Amboy Dukes?) and the paternal bonds that teenage boys need and reject at the same time. A haunting, powerful story that hints at the greatness that was only a few years away from Bradbury.” 

It went of print immediately but the paperback is fairly easy to find at the usual sellers.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born October 24, 1893 — Merian Cooper. Aviator, Writer, Director and Producer. After spending WWI in the Air Force, Cooper became a writer and researcher for The New York Times and later the American Geographic Society, traveling the world, and writing stories and giving lectures about his travels. He then turned some of his writing into documentary films. He had helped David Selznick get a job at RKO Pictures, and later Selznick hired him to make movies. He developed one of his story ideas into a movie featuring a giant gorilla which is terrorizing New York City. King Kong was released in 1933, and the story has been sequeled, remade, comicbooked, and rebooted innumerable times in the last 85 years. (Died 1973.) (JJ) 
  • Born October 24, 1915 — Bob Kane. Writer and Artist who co-created, along with Bill Finger, the DC character Batman. Multiple sources report that “Kane said his influences for the character included actor Douglas Fairbanks’ movie portrayal of the swashbuckler Zorro, Leonardo da Vinci’s diagram of the ornithopter, a flying machine with huge bat-like wings; and the 1930 film The Bat Whispers, based on Mary Roberts Rinehart’s mystery novel The Circular Staircase.” He was inducted into Jack Kirby Hall of Fame and the Will Eisner Hall of Fame. The character he created has been featured in countless comic books, stories, movies, TV series, animated features, videogames, and action figures in the last eight decades. The 1989 movie based on his creation, featuring Michael Keaton in the title role, was a finalist for both Hugo and British Science Fiction Association Awards. (Died 1998.)
  • Born October 24, 1948 — Margaret “Peggy” Ranson. Artist, Illustrator, and Fan, who became involved with fandom when she co-edited the program book for the 1988 Worldcon in New Orleans. She went on to provide art for many fanzines and conventions, and was a finalist for the Best Fan Artist Hugo every one of the eight years from 1991 to 1998, winning once. She was Guest of Honor at several conventions, including a DeepSouthCon. Sadly, she died of cancer in 2016; Mike Glyer’s lovely tribute to her can be read here. (Died 2016.)
  • Born October 24, 1952 — Jane Fancher, 70. Writer and Artist. In the early 80s, she was an art assistant on Elfquest, providing inking assistance on the black and white comics and coloring of the original graphic novel reprints. She adapted portions of C.J. Cherryh’s first Morgaine novel into a black and white comic book, which prompted her to begin writing novels herself. Her first novel, Groundties, was a finalist for the Compton Crook Award, and she has been Guest of Honor and Toastmaster at several conventions.
  • Born October 24, 1956 — Katie Waitman, 66. Her best known work to date was the Compton Crook Award winning The Merro Tree in which a galaxy-spanning performance artist must defy a ban imposed on him. Her second novel, The Divided, appears to be bog standard military SF but really isn’t. Highly recommended.  
  • Born October 24, 1956 — Dr. Jordin Kare. Physicist, Filker, and Fan who was known for his scientific research on laser propulsion. A graduate of MIT and Berkeley, he said that he chose MIT because of the hero in Heinlein’s Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. He was a regular attendee and science and filk program participant at conventions, from 1975 until his untimely death. He met his wife, Mary Kay Kare, at the 1981 Worldcon. He should be remembered and honored as being an editor of The Westerfilk Collection: Songs of Fantasy and Science Fiction, a crucial filksong collection, and later as a partner in Off Centaur Publications, the very first commercial publisher specializing in filk songbooks and recordings. Shortly after the shuttle Columbia tragedy, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, on live TV, attempted to read the lyrics to Jordin’s Pegasus Award-winning song “Fire in the Sky”, which celebrates manned space exploration. He was Guest of Honor at numerous conventions, and was named to the Filk Hall of Fame. Mike Glyer’s tribute to him can be read here. (Died 2017.) (JJ)
  • Born October 24, 1960 — BD Wong, 62.  His first genre role was in Jurassic Park as Dr. Henry Wu (a role reprised in Jurassic World, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Jurassic Park Dominion). He was the voice of Captain Li Shang on Mulan, and Whiterose, head of the hacker collective Dark Army on Mr. Robot.
  • Born October 24, 1974 — Liesel Schwarz, 48. She’s been dubbed, by whom I know not I admit, “The High Priestess of British Steampunk”. She has written the Chronicles of Light and Shadow trilogy, a sequence set in a Steampunk version of Europe in which the three novels are Chronicles of Light and Shadow, A Clockwork Heart and Sky Pirates.
  • Born October 24, 1971 — Sofia Samatar, 51. Teacher, Writer, and Poet who speaks several languages and started out as a language instructor, a job which took her to Egypt for nine years. She won the Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and is the author of two wonderful novels to date, both of which I highly recommend: Stranger in Olondria (which won World Fantasy and British Fantasy Awards and was nominated for a Nebula) and The Winged Histories. Her short story “Selkie Stories are for Losers” was nominated for Hugo, Nebula, BSFA, and BFA Awards. She has written enough short fiction in just six years that Small Beer Press put out Tender, a collection which is a twenty-six stories strong. And she has a most splendid website. (Standback)

(8) COMICS SECTION.

  • Six Chix may be a comic but these characters are not overdrawn.
  • Tom Gauld on the perfect book cover. Almost.

(9) BULLPEN MEMORIES. “An iconic Daredevil writer and X-Men editor joins the pod to talk about taking translating stories from The Daily News into the Daily Bugle.” “The Girl From Marvel’s Boy-Club Bullpen Tells All About Old Times Square” in the FAQ NYC podcast.

Ann Nocenti, the writer, journalist and filmmaker who wrote and edited some of the most iconic Marvel comics of the late 1980s and early 1990s joins the podcast to discuss her early years in New York as “the girl who lived behind the fish tank,” quite literally, how her work in asylums influenced her stories about superheroes, creating Marvel’s first openly transgender character, the role of “fake news” in the comics she’s working on now, and much more. 

(10) NOT A ONE NIGHT STAND. Deadline lists the film adaptations of Howard Waldrop stories that George R.R. Martin is producing. “’House of the Dragon’ Creator George R.R. Martin On Short Film Anthology Including One With Felicia Day”.

Days before a Targaryen civil war erupts between Rhaenyra and Alicent on the Season 1 finale of HBO’s House of the Dragon, you’ll find series creator George R.R. Martin staying mum on fire-breathing animals and talking up his latest rotoscope animated short, Night of the Cooters, in his Santa Fe, NM stomping ground.

The Vincent D’Onofrio-directed cowboys vs. aliens film based on the Howard Waldrop short story is one of four short movies Martin is producing in what is shaping up to be an anthology either for the big screen (a la Creepshow) or TV (a la Love, Death and Robots)…

In addition to Night of the Cooters, Martin recently finished production on the second title he owns from sci-fi author Waldrop. Currently titled Friends Forever, the short was directed by Justin Duval, a producer and DP on Night of the Cooters, and is currently in post.

Another short currently shooting in Santa Fe under the helm of Steven Paul Judd is Mary Margaret Road-Grader, which Martin billed as a “Native American Mad Max story about tractor pulls and feminism.”

Then there’s Waldrop’s most notable work, The Ugly Chickens, about the extinction of the dodo, which is about to shoot in Toronto with Kodachrome‘s Mark Raso directing….

(11) HOMES OF HORROR. Kelsey Ford lists “Haunted House Books That Will Keep You Up At Night” for readers of the PowellsBooks.Blog.

…In honor of spooky season (the best season), I’ve pulled together a by-no-means-exhaustive list of my favorite haunted house books, books with houses that exemplify the Shirley’s Jackson quote: “It was a house without kindness, never meant to be lived in, not a fit place for people or for love or for hope.”…

(12) MIDDLE EASTERN ANIMATION HIT. “Bidaya Blasts Back to the Future with Sci-Fi Show, ‘The Adventures of Mansour: Age of A.I.’” – Animation Magazine has the story.

The Adventures of Mansour, a sci-fi cartoon phenomenon from the Middle East that’s racked up an astounding two billion YouTube hits, is returning with an all-new sequel series, The Adventures of Mansour: Age of A.I.  

Funded by Mubadala Investment Company and Abu Dhabi Early Childhood Authority (ECA), the dynamic adventure show is aimed at kids aged 6-12. This Mansour relaunch from Bidaya Media, recently announced at MIPCOM 2022, will be the first Arab cartoon first created in English and Arabic then realigned for a worldwide audience presenting topical themes of artificial intelligence, technology, climate change, and space exploration.

…Here’s the official description:

Set in the near future, in the technologically advanced Salam City, ‘The Adventures of Mansour: Age of AI’ is a sci-fi action adventure series that revolves around Mansour, a 12-year-old tech whiz, who unintentionally creates a mischievous sentient artificial intelligence known as Blink. With the support of his closest friends, Mansour must deal with all manner of pranks, challenges and dangers posed by Blink, who for his own amusement, is determined to cause as much chaos as possible for Mansour and the people of Salam City.  

(13) LAND(ED)SHARK. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] Tom Scott explores the controversy over the British house with a shark in its roof (a story I think is fandom-adjacent). “The government approves of this shark now.”

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, and John King Tarpinian, for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day OGH.]

Pixel Scroll 10/23/22 The Scrolls Of The Prophets Are Written In The Pixel Files

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(1) THE LIBRARY OF RAY’S YOUTH. “Work begins on renovation of Carnegie Library building” in Waukegan, IL reports the Chicago Tribune in a paywalled story.

Janet Kilkelly, the president of the Waukegan Park District’s Board of Commissioners and the city clerk, remembers spending time in her youth at the Carnegie Library, built in 1903 at the northeast corner of Washington Street and Sheridan Road.

“The children’s room was there,” Kilkelly said, pointing to the room to the left as people walk in the door thinking about how it will soon be the home of the Waukegan History Museum. “It was a magical place. I like books. This was nirvana.”

Kilkelly led a group of federal, state and local officials at the groundbreaking ceremony Tuesday in front of the Carnegie as a prelude to the start of construction for the renovation of the former library into the permanent home of the museum.

…“It will be a chance for them to learn about the history of Waukegan,” Kilkelly said. “Perhaps one of them will be inspired like the young Ray Bradbury when he spent his days here,” she added, referring to the Waukegan native and world-renowned author.

Ty Rohrer, the Park District’s manager of cultural affairs, the chair of the city’s Historic Preservation Commission and a historian by profession, said the onetime children’s reading room will be redone to look as it did in Bradbury’s youth.

When complete, Rohrer said the room will contain the collection of papers, books and other memorabilia Bradbury willed to the Waukegan Public Library. The collection will be there on a long-term loan from the library to the museum….

(2) SPOILERY DOCTOR WHO NEWS. Don’t even hover your cursor over the link to Deadline’s coverage of Jodie Whittaker’s last Doctor Who episode if you want to preserve all surprises til you can view it yourself. On the other hand, if you want to know what happened, click through.  

(3) CORFLU AWARDS. Corflu today adopted Tom Becker’s proposal that fwa, the “fan writers of America”, be changed to mean “fan writers association”, with the proviso that “writer” stands in for any creative fannish endeavor. Subsequently, Claire Brialey was elected “past president of fwa” for 2021.

Also, Geri Sullivan was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award.

(4) IRISH NATIONAL SF CON COVID REPORT. [Item by Edmund Schluessel.] Octocon 2022 returned to in-person in its new venue of Croke Park, Dublin and, with 283 warm bodies present, reports NO cases of COVID-19 one week after the convention wrapped.

Octocon had a policy of mandatory masks (exemptions were available) and requested all in-person members take self-tests before attending.

From the post-Octocon edition of the members’ newsletter: “Thank you to everyone for complying with our mask requirements. We would like to remind people to let us know if they have tested positive following Octocon, either by using our #covid-safety channel on Discord, which has a ticketing bot to create a private message thread visible only to the committee, or by contacting [email protected]. We’re happy to report that we’ve had no reports of positive tests so far.”

(5) FINLAY ART OFFERED. Doug Ellis has been asked to raise some money quickly for Virgil Finlay’s granddaughter, Brien, and so rather than putting together his usual type of catalog, Ellis has taken pictures of 42 pieces of Finlay art that have not appeared in any of his catalogs and posted the images here on Dropbox.

All of this art is on consignment from Brien.  All of the files have an identifying number in the image together with the price, and that info also is included in the file name (except for the one Word file, which contains info on the size of each piece). The prices do NOT include shipping.

If you’d like to purchase any of these, please email Doug Ellis at [email protected] 

(6) FLY FREE. The SFWA Blog series “The Indie Files” continues with Anthony W. Eichenlaub’s advice about “An Indie Approach to Series”.

…Fixing a Series After Publication

You’ve crunched the numbers. Readers who get through the second book in your series tend to read every book after that. You expect a dropoff from the first to the second, but the numbers are terrible, and you know why:

The first book isn’t good.

You’ve grown as a writer, and now that book’s flaws are painfully obvious. The later books in your series are fantastic. Reviews are great. People who get that far are turning into your best fans. The problem is that most of them just aren’t getting that far.

A traditionally published author would likely be stuck. They could either work on a new series or, if their publisher allowed it, continue to crank out books hoping to overcome the weak start with rave reviews for later entries.

An indie author has the power to fix a bad Book 1. You can go in and tweak a few things, send it through another round of edits, or even in extreme circumstances, give it a complete rewrite. You can make the imperfect first book a prequel or even remove it entirely, promoting Book 2 to the first spot….

(7) JUSTIN E.A. BUSCH DIES. [Item by George Phillies.] Justin Edwin Anton Busch, editor of the N3F zine Films Fantastic and monthly fanzine review column “Fanfaronade”, died peacefully in his sleep in the early evening of Friday, October 21, 2022. His death, while untimely, was not unexpected.

Justin E. A. Busch, a long-time fan from St. Paul, Minnesota authored the nonfiction work The Utopian Vision of H.G. Wells, published by McFarland Company in 2009.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

1962 — [By Cat Eldridge.] Bradbury wrote one of the shortest opening narrations that Serling gave in the series:

They make a fairly convincing pitch here. It doesn’t seem possible, though, to find a woman who must be ten times better than mother in order to seem half as good, except, of course, in the Twilight Zone. — “I Sing the Body Electric”

Though I didn’t know that Bradbury had a script produced for the one and true Twilight Zone, it doesn’t at all surprise me that he did. I had assumed Serling wrote all of the episodes. Not true as it turns out, to my delight, as we get the “I Sing the Body Electric”. It is said that he contributed several scripts to The Twilight Zone, but this was the only one produced. He certainly was no stranger to tv script writing with five scripts for the Alfred Hitchcock Presents series alone. 

This would air as the thirtieth-fifth episode of the third season on May 18, 1962. This was one of six Twilight Zones episodes directed by James Sheldon and his co-director William Clazton who did four. 

LOOK, GO EAT A CANDY APPLE FOR A MINUTE PLEASE. 

Just three words this time— sweet robotic grandmothers. Ok, a few more. My god, this episode drips with cloyness, it does. A recent widower, needing care for his three young children, orders a robotic “grandmother”. Two of the children accept her, but one of his daughters adamantly rejects her, with what might be near fatal consequences. 

DID YOU ENJOY THAT CANDY APPLE? 

You can see it on Paramount +

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born October 23, 1880 — Una O’Connor. Actress who appeared in the 1930s The Invisible Man as Jenny Hall. She had a bit part in Bride of Frankenstein, and a supporting role in the genre-adjacent The Adventures of Robin Hood. Though not even genre adjacent, she was Mrs. Peters in the film adaptation of Graham Greene’s Stamboul. Great novel, I’ll need to see if I can find this film. She’s in The Canterville Ghost, and shows up twice in TV’s Tales of Tomorrow anthology series. And that’s it. (Died 1959.)
  • Born October 23, 1918 — James Daly. He was Mr. Flint in Trek‘s “Requiem for Methuselah” episode. He also showed up on The Twilight Zone, Mission:Impossible and The Invaders. He was Honorious in The Planet of The Apes, and Dr. Redding in The Resurrection of Zachary Wheeler.  (Died 1978.)
  • Born October 23, 1935 — Bruce Mars, 87. Here for his most excellent role on Star Trek in the “Shore Leave” episode as Finnegan. Earlier he had been brought in to audition for the role of Junior Navigations Officer Dave Bailey in episode “The Corbomite Maneuver” but someone else got that part, but he did come back for a part in “Assignment Earth” where he was listed as First Policeman.  He had one-offs in Time Tunnel, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Mission: Impossible. He is now Brother Paramananda with the Self-Realization Fellowship in Los Angeles which he joined shortly after ending his acting career in 1969. 
  • Born October 23, 1948 — Brian Catling. Author of The Vorrh trilogy whose first novel, The Vorrh, has an introduction by Alan Moore. Writing was just one facet of his work life as he was a sculptor, poet, novelist, film maker and performance. And artist. Impressively he held Professor of Fine Art at the [John] Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford and was a fellow of Linacre College. Yeah that John Ruskin. (Died 2022.)
  • Born October 23, 1953 — Ira Steven Behr, 69. Best remembered for his work on the Trek franchise, particularly Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, on which he served as showrunner and executive producer. As writer and or producer, he has been in involved in Beyond Reality, Dark Angel, The Twilight Zone, The 4400, Alphas, and Outlander. 
  • Born October 23, 1959 — Sam Raimi, 63. Responsible for, and this is not a complete listing, the Darkman franchise, M.A.N.T.I.S., the Jack of All Trades series that Kage loved, the Cleopatra 2525 series, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess series and the Spider-Man trilogy. 
  • Born October 23, 1969 — Trudi Canavan, 53. Australian writer who’s won two Ditmars for her Thief’s Magic and A Room for Improvement novels and two Aurealis Awards as well, one for her “Whispers of the Mist Children” short story, and one for The Magician’s Apprentice novel.  It’s worth noting that she’s picked up two Ditmar nominations for her artwork as well. 
  • Born October 23, 1974 — Naomi Alderman, 48. English novelist and game writer. The Power with its premise being the women suddenly the ability to release electrical waves from their hands, thus leading them to become the dominant sex. The novel is set to be turned an Amazon Prime Video television series, but what isn’t? She’s also written two Doctor Who novels set in the new series, Borrowed Time and Time Lapse, and some short fiction there as well.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) COSTUME PARTY. Lis Carey’s dog Cider went to a Howloween party at the dog park today.

Cider at Howloween
A better view of the costume
An extra cute photo taken in August

(12) HIDE THAT BOOK! To enrich your Colleen Hoover knowledge, we bring you Mayi H.S. Hughes’ article “In Defense of Colleen Hoover: Intellectual Snobbery at Harvard” from The Harvard Crimson.

A few weeks ago, I did something bizarre. I was sitting in the dining hall, reading a book when my friend approached me from behind and, peering over my shoulder, asked me what I was reading. Almost immediately, I slammed the book shut and spluttered, “Oh, nothing.”.

As the conversation moved on, my eyes turned to the cover of my Colleen Hoover novel, which I had so shamefully hidden. The truth is, I was embarrassed. I had bought the book solely because of a TikTok video, with thousands of likes and comments raving about Hoover’s “It Ends With Us.” Having been up all night ripping through its pages, I had come to several conclusions: It was a terribly written book; it was repulsively predictable ]; and most importantly, I loved it.

My shame of being found reading Colleen Hoover stemmed from a culture of intellectual snobbery — feeling superior and prideful about the type of culture you consume. It’s the person who prides themselves on their knowledge of “classical” literature, listing off the last names of authors such as John Milton, Charles Dickens, and Jane Austen as if they are family friends….

…David M. Levine, a Theater, Dance, and Media professor, described intellectual snobbery as “automatically excluding materials from intellectual consideration because they give immediate pleasure.” Being an intellectual snob means feeling superior to e mass culture, due to the status and inaccessibility of the type of culture you consume, literary and beyond.

Intellectual snobbery can feel especially pervasive at Harvard, where books like Hoover’s are rarely on reading lists. But her work was clearly popular amongst the masses – number one in the New York Times Best Sellers List as of January 2022. It was an easy read with a simple plot….

(13) TITANS MOVE TO THE CITY. That’s The City. HBO Max dropped this trailer for the new season of Titans last week.

Having saved Gotham, the Titans hit the road to head back to San Francisco. But after a stop in Metropolis, they find themselves in the crosshairs of a supernatural cult with powers unlike anything they’ve faced before.

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] Andy Martin asks if people can stand the titanic genius of Mr. Director.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Chris Barkley, Lis Carey, Doug Ellis, Jeffrey Smith, Lise Andreasen, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, and JJ for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Dan’l Danehy-Oakes.]